Little progress made in bridging digital gap: WEF

World Economic Forum (WEF) in its latest report released Wednesday said little progress has been witnessed in bridging the digital gap across countries and regions.

Based on Networked Readiness Index, the Global Information Technology Report 2014 assessed the capacity of a record 148 countries and regions to leverage information and communications technologies (ICT) for their growths and well-beings, Xinhua reported.

The annual report showed a dominance of developed economies in the top rankings.

Finland topped the ranking, followed by Singapore, Sweden, the Netherlands, Norway and Switzerland, and all the top six places kept their positions unchanged from the last year.

The US moved two notches up to the seventh place compared to the last year, followed by China’s Hong Kong (8th), Britain (9th) and the Republic of Korea (10th).

The report found many emerging economies placed lower on the list, saying that they “continue to struggle to realise their full digital potential”.

Among the BRICS countries, Russia took the lead and ranked the 50th, followed by China (62nd), Brazil (69th), South Africa (70th) and India (83rd).

The report suggested governments focus on developing the ICT infrastructure and meanwhile creating the right conditions for an effective use of ICT to boost innovation, competitiveness and higher social inclusion, in an effort to narrow the digital divide.